Dawn
by Gentle Breezes
Summary: One-shot Jim-centric. For Jim Hawkins, the dawn brings many things. Hardship, chores, challenges, panic, hope. But perhaps most of all, it brings dreams...


**Disclaimer: **I am not responsible for the creation of Treasure Planet in any way, shape or form. I just own a copy of the movie and commandeered the a few characters for this story.

* * *

Dawn is when the ships leave the spaceport. He can't see them up close — big and brilliant with large white, red or blue sails — but he spots the glimmer of their rockets as they shoot into the reaches of space that exist only as they can in the vivid, bursting color of youthful imagination. He opens his window as quietly as he can, hair billowing in the fresh breeze as watches gold flecks careen into a light navy sky, like stars fleeing from the oncoming sun. With the ships go his thoughts, floating past his sleepy eyes and up through the sparse clouds into stories branded on his heart like promises. He's too young to be up so early, but he makes it his business to see the sunrise and the ships whenever he can.

The dawn, early though it is, brings dreams.

* * *

Dawn is when the inn comes to life. Lots of chores to do, lots of meals to cook right, and quietly if you please because most customers are still sleeping or need to be appeased before rushing off to their transports. All manners of people come through and stop for rest and a bite to eat, and it's only he and his mother to run the whole operation. So he drags himself out of bed, ignoring the sun stabbing through the shudders because it reminds him there's a day ahead of him that involves school or helping run the place he used to call "home". Once in a while though, he'll stop in the middle of getting dressed and open the window, his mother unable to be awoken by the noise because she's already been up for an hour. And he'll stare into the sunrise, glance up at the space station, suddenly feeling a million miles away from it. With a sigh he'll shut the window a little harder than he opened it and head downstairs, ignoring the dull, empty ache settling in his lungs.

The dawn, for all its mesmerizing beauty, brings nothing but hardship.

* * *

Dawn comes after he is up, unable to sleep. Five nights ago the house blazed to ashes, along with many things he once called precious. His mom's been crying for almost all of those nights, and it makes him feel guilty even though it's not his fault. He's cried a little too, usually by himself on some balcony or turret roof where no one can see. The tears come now, but not because of grief. A dream, so close he can taste it, closer still and he can almost hold it, and he wonders if it's all real. Like a forgotten heirloom he's taken it down and dusted it off, examined it in all its strange, mysterious glory, and found it just the way he'd left it. He opens the large, double door window that sits in his temporary room, and is welcomed by a strong but inviting breeze. He looks at the sunrise, numb, breathless, weightless. Then he looks at the spaceport. Yesterday, Delbert had managed to find the ship they would sail on. Now all that was needed was the captain and crew. He drew in a deep breath, watching the ships leave the spaceport, the light from their rockets barely visible against the sun's rays. He'd forgotten how bright the sun could be. He finds himself smiling, slowly, but surely, so full of hope and fear he could almost burst.

Today, even amidst the shambles of days past, dawn shows more promise than these past years have allowed.

* * *

Technically, there is no "dawn" in space. The sun will peak out from behind a few planets if you travel in the correct direction, but it's a rare day when they stand still enough for a full cycle of light. Other times, there would be comets or moons to provide and occasional shimmer. It all comes down to the internal clock, or relying on that of the crew's. So far he's been able to manage. He's the cabin boy and has a lot to do, somehow managing to drag himself to his hammock after a full day of work. So much for adventure. But this is no inn and these are no ordinary customers, and for that he is at least thankful. Silver has provided more than enough evidence to render routine a useless word to describe the day. There is always ale, brusque laughter, dashes of words he's never heard rolling off the tongues of peg-legs and one-eyed's. His mother, he thinks, would panic if she knew.

When he's ordered around he hates it. When he isn't, and more often when he won't admit it, he loves it.

He barely has time to acknowledge the "sunrise", which happens to be a red dwarf nearby, as he runs off to help Silver in the kitchen.

The dawn, for all its work, also brings a strange and far more exciting existence.

* * *

On the dawn of this day he remembers something Delbert had told him: familiarity breeds contempt. Cynicism built upon years of necessity and struggle in the face of unfairness would claim more truth in this than anything else, but he finds he's less ready to hold grudges now. Whatever enemies he makes on the boat he slowly learns to ignore or get along with caustically. Most of the crew is indifferent to him anyway, so the job gets less difficult as the journey drags on, along with Silver's guidance in these matters.

Jim would have liked very much to hate the old cyborg. Rumors and suspicion aside, he would at least have some place to put the contempt that's festered in him since childhood. It's a small part of a bigger wish that he didn't need help; he's survived this long, so he should make it on this ship without trying, and definitely without some old salt telling him how to do things. But now, as he sits inside a barrel of purple fruit, he really wishes he hadn't thought about that in the first place. All that time in the kitchen, all those stories, all those moments he gave into the niggling need that he couldn't mistrust forever. He hasn't felt this much panic at sunrise since his father left. But, he thinks to himself as he dodges the cyborg and runs to get help, at least he's a little more capable now than back then.

Today, dawn brings no fun or good. It doesn't even bring any chores. But it does bring action, and that is enough to forget that the start to this day has been another let down.

* * *

It's hard to believe what has happened in one whole day and night. He has been forced into a corner, forced onto a strange, man-made planet, and forced to fight for his life and the lives of others. And the man who had betrayed him turned out to have a heart after all. Impossible and ridiculous though it seems, his reasons to hate the cyborg have been retracted and he's so very relieved.

None of this went as expected, he thinks as he takes off to open a different door on the portal. He'd dreamed of an ideal adventure, with an ideal success and no trouble whatsoever. Seems years ago since they first set sail. But not all wrong turns mean a bad decision, and not all unknowns are evil or unkind. He has changed since those years kicking up dust and rocks on the Montressori plains. And although he waves goodbye to the one person who came the closest to fitting the word "father", he is happy.

It had been one heck of a sunrise, and one heck of a day to follow it. But there would probably be no other dawn like this one. This he will remember for a life time.

* * *

There is no reason for waking before dawn this morning.

With a large yawn and an even larger stretch, he kicks his legs over the edge of his bed and stands up. The feeling of the new floor beneath him is a good one, a smile tugging at his lips when there are no creaks in the floorboards. He, his mother, and a few others they knew had built the new Benbow Inn with their own hands, determined to make every inch of it precious and theirs. It's been lived in it for just a few weeks, yet already it is home.

His smile grows as he goes to the window and swings it open, making sure the large frame doesn't hit the side of the wall too hard. Everyone, even his mother, is still asleep. The breeze plays through his hair, neatly trimmed ahead of time for the Academy. The sun begins its ascension above the horizon, barely peeking over the edge before staining the landscape orange. He's come a long way from when he was young and wishing with all his might for a chance to leave the surface. He looks up at the spaceport and watches a few ships take off, losing track of time and imagining how one day he might be on one of those ships, and some other kid might be down here looking up at the same sky with the same hope he once had, and still has now.

He grins as he breathes in deeply, the sun finally completely risen above the horizon and blazing in its full glory. Eyes closed, he lets the rays hit him right in the face, words about light coming off his sails coming to mind.

The dawn, even after all these years passing, still brings dreams.

* * *

**A/N: **This makes the third piece piece I've written for Treasure Planet. Wow, seriously never thought I'd have ideas to write another.

By the way, totally-related-but-not-really to this fic, have you woken up to a sunrise lately? I did the other day, and it was _wonderful_. Kind of made me feel how Jimbo does in the last bit of this piece of writing.

I'd love a critique on this because this was submitted years ago and I doctored it up to (hopefully) be better than it was. I know it's a little repetitive but I tried to re-approach this as well as I could.

Thank you for reading, as always.


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